Notes From Our Cruel World

We were still reeling from the Colorado movie shootings when a man wondered:

By contrasting the ease with which Aurora shooter James Holmes ordered guns and ammunition online with the rapid FBI response when a Muslim would-be terrorist in Aurora sent a single suspicious email a few years ago, Denver Post columnist Chuck Murphy states the obvious in his column today: this mass shooting might have turned out very differently if James Holmes had been named Ibrahim or Mohammed.

“This guy literally arms himself to the teeth by mail order without anyone pointing a finger and saying, ‘What’s going on?’” asked [Denver] Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, a little incredulous. “If my name is Ibrahim or Mohammed and I order a gun or that much ammunition on the Internet, I think within a few hours of the delivery, the FBI and CIA is at my house.”

Well maybe two men wondered, an Imam and a columnist. If Holmes had been a Muslim would he have been able to act so bizarre, and order an arsenal through the mail, and generally creep the crap out of everybody before going on his killing spree?

Ask yourself that. Chew on ‘what if’ for a moment. Now throw this in your mix, courtesy the National Enquirer:

James Holmes, the gunman behind the Dark Knight massacre in Colorado last July, has reportedly turned Muslim and prays five times a day.

The killer showed off a lengthy, thick beard during a court appearance earlier this month, and a prison source has claimed it is a symbol of his new-found faith.

The source said Holmes has turned to Islam as a way of justifying his horrific murder spree in an Aurora, Colorado cinema on July 20 which left 12 people dead and 58 people wounded.

Oh great.

‘He has brainwashed himself into believing he was on his own personal jihad and that his victims were infidels,’ a prison source told the National Enquirer.

He now prays five times a day, sticks to a strict Muslim diet and spends hours each day studying the Qur’an, the source said. But his new routine has upset Muslim inmates.

‘None of them condone forms of terrorism or extremism,’ the source added. ‘And they don’t want their religion to be connected to that awful shooting.’

What does it mean? I don’t know. But it must be true because it makes my head throb.